Seth Weintraub

Another report out of China has Foxconn closing its recruiting in Shenzen and possibly moving to Western China.   Foxconn was averaging 7000-8000 recruits a day(!).

The report also wonders if Foxconn’s troubles will have any effect on iPhones and other products coming out of their facilities.  

They also say that Foxconn is scheduled to make 24 million iPhones by the end of the year — which translates to 4 million a month.  That’s significantly more than the 3 million/month report we heard earlier today.

Apple is ready to sell up to three million iPhone 4’s each month, leaks from within its component supply chain have revealed. The company has booked sufficient components to sell 9 million or more iPhone 4 handsets each quarter.

That

Google’s future Chrome OS will apparently let users access applications on their Mac or PC remotely — why this claim hints at the pervasive future of the Mac OS at the end of the PC age. Read more.

We all noted that Apple

According to ON.CC, Foxconn is moving some-to-all of its production facilites to Taiwan, Vietnam, and India.  The move comes on the back of suicides, and subsequent pay raises for workers at the facilities.  

According to the Register, “the announcement came at a shareholders meeting of the Hon Hai Group, Foxconn’s parent company. Chairman Terry Gou said that production would be withdrawn from mainland China and shifted to Taiwan, Vietnam, and India. There are currently 800,000 Foxconn workers on the mainland, and if all Foxconn manufacturing there eventually ceases, they would all be out of work.”

The report has yet to be independently verified, via Gizmodo.

And just like that, the Feds are involved.

The FBI says it is investigating a data breach at AT&T that exposed the e-mail addresses of more than 114,000 owners of the Apple iPad, including government officials. The agency said Thursday it is looking into “the potential cyber threat” from the breach.

It isn’t certain what “cyber threat” a bunch of email addresses could pose, but with high ranking government officials, including the White house staff and military involved, the FBI is probably on a “better safe than sorry” gameplan.  

“The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation,” said Katherine Schweit, an FBI spokeswoman. Ms. Schweit said the FBI opened the investigation Thursday but it will not comment on what it is looking at. “It’s very early in the investigation,” she said.

A small group of computer experts that calls itself Goatse Security said it discovered the flaw, saying it was able to find the email addresses on AT&T’s website by guessing numbers that identify iPads connected to AT&T’s mobile network. The group said it uncovered 114,000 email addresses, including those of prominent officials in companies, politics and the military. A member of the group says it hasn’t heard from law enforcement and that it didn’t do anything illegal, so doesn’t see why it would.

Everyone’s favorite web plugin just got a significant upgrade to version 10.1.   If you haven’t been beta testing it, you’ll find that it DOES NOT support the H.264 hardware acceleration that was originally revealed in their Gala release (update here). But, it has to be more stable than the version you are currently using, right?

Is there anyone out there that hasn’t yet took a swing at AT&T’s 3G network?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqsAwrMpUE0&w=700&h=400]

via SAI

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtGCaKyd_co&w=700&h=400]

Adobe

Big news in the US, where T-Mobile is now being named as a potential additional carrier for the iPhone 4. Meanwhile, struggling to meet demand, carriers seem to be moving away from offering unlimited data deals for the iPhone. UK carrier O2 today revealed its all new deals, dumping

Please could you just quit it with your whinging and worrying that the Mac is dead as Apple rides off into the mobile markets and leaves its PC heartland behind — Steve Jobs says all this speculation is

There are plenty of uncomfortable moments in this one.  AllThingsD posts the full interview:

http://s.wsj.net/media/swf/microPlayer.swf

Flash disabled here.

Apple

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHngLJ0RlNg&w=700&h=420]

Old Apple friend, Nokia, couldn’t help but notice that Scott Forstall said that the new iPhone 4 is all about ‘Connecting People’. According to some Finnish sites, that didn’t go over well at Nokia  HQ.  Nokia is considering adding a trademark dispute to its list of beefs with Apple.  Translated from the site:

Apple’s slogan theft has been notified at Nokia’s headquarters. Aamulehti reported yesterday Apple’s new iPhone 4 advertisement video, in which Apple’s Manager Scott Forstall borrows carelessly Nokia’s famous slogan. The unscrupulous quotation has been met with astonishment at Nokia. Company’s Communications Director Tapani Kaskinen commented to Ilta Sanomat that “Connecting People” slogan is a protected trademark in many countries, including the United States. – ‘It has been used by Nokia since the 1990’s and is one of the world’s most known slogans.’ Kaskinen says. Apple and Nokia have sued and countersued each other in patent disputes. So far it is unclear whether Nokia will take the use of their marketing trademarks to court.

Steve Jobs promised that the iPhone 4’s Glass would be much stronger than the iPhones before it, but is it strong enough to take a fall onto a hard surface?

On just the third drop, the fine folks at iFixYouri landed up with a completely shattered display. The iPhone 4’s back uses glass as well, so when you drop this thing your chances of breaking aren’t just lined up with the front screen. The site goes on to mention the iPhone 4 shatters so easily because the glass is not recessed like some previous iPhone models. More images below:

Some side notes of reference:

-iFixYouri is no iFixit so their claims should be taken that way. Before determining how easily the screen shatters, you should wait until some professional tests are done in the coming weeks leading up to launch. 

-Additionally those are just spare iPhone 4 parts, and are definitely not fitted how Apple intended them to be. There are probably tons of mechanisms and chemicals that hold that thing together so shattering like that doesn’t happen. 

Update: Hey guys, what’s with all the threats in the comments? We can’t post some slightly negative Apple news without a mutiny?

Here’s the hint.  What do you think they mean?

Big things are happening RIGHT NOW at Valve. Things involving cultivated tree-fruit. BIG things. Things that rhyme with “grapple.” Things that rhyme with “Speem Gortress zmavailable on the Babac.” Not today. But tomorrow. BIG THINGS. Stay tuned…

Perhaps not the best timing with the AT&T security breach (Including Rahm Emanuel’s name), but today, the Washington Post details the use of the iPad at the White House, which seems to be spreading like wildfire.

The device is the hot, new White House toy, a gizmo that is popping up around Washington but seems to be particularly in vogue at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Emanuel just got his, as did senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy press secretary Bill Burton. Both communications director Dan Pfeiffer and press wrangler Ben Finkenbinder have one on order. Economic adviser Larry Summers takes his to staff meetings.

The Washington Post does a run down on who uses what apps. 

Though not as popular in Congress, “one veteran Republican consultant Russ Schreifer — an early iPhone adopter — says his iPad is the “fully souped-up, 64-gig, 3G version. Why not? Right.”

Schreifer has the Epicurious app for cooking and the interactive Elmo book for his 2-year-old daughter. He has two books: “The War Lovers,” by Evan Thomas, and “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” by Seth Grahame-Smith. There are also a few episodes of the just-finished “24” television series, transferred from his iPhone to take advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen.

But Schreifer says the device is not all for play. He says he’s already approved rough cuts of campaign commercials and raw footage for ads on the iPad.

“Love it,” he said. “Love it.”

Matt Buchanon had a little conversation with AT&T security chief Ed Amororo on the hack.  It turns out that AT&T wanted to make logging into your 3G data plan dashboard a little easier on the iPad so they populated the email address based on the ICC-ID.  

Hackers effectively used a brute force technique to get the system to spit out email addresses.  As of now, the email populating system is turned off (above image).

Ol’ Ed might have some explaining to do.  While email addresses aren’t the biggest loss for their customers, AT&T should have known that they would be vulnerable with such a system.

Ars isn’t drinking the Kool-Aid.  On one hand Apple is blocking other companies’ analytics (which face it, makes ads useless) and enforcing their own iAds on iPhone apps, while on the other hand, it offers Safari reader which blocks Internet ads (which it has no part of) in Safari.

There is something contradictory

AT&T!  What’s not to love?!  According to Gawker, hackers were able to access a script on the AT&T website that would give up an iPad user email address if the iPad ICC-ID’s were known.  The hackers, part of a group called Goatse Security (OMG), used known ICC-ID numbers to create a program to automatically pull 114,000 email addresses including high ranking military, business and government leaders.

AT&T has known about the breach for at least two days, yet hasn’t notified any customers, according to Gawker.

Within the military, we saw several devices registered to the domain of DARPA, the advanced research division of the Department of Defense, along with the major service branches. To wit: One affected individual was William Eldredge, who “commands the largest operational B-1 [strategic bomber] group in the U.S. Air Force.” In the media and entertainment industries, affected accounts belonged to top executives at the New York Times Company, Dow Jones, Cond